Solar Upgrades...., and a blown up generator! Options

[Caveman]

Signed a contract to upgrade our solar last Saturday, and our old Generac Guardian 16kw gave up and ate its rotor and stator, so it was replaced by another Guardian 14kw
genset on Tuesday. Guardian Gensets are designed as back-up generators for homes when the power grid fails. For non-grid homes (like mine), they back up the solar
power during the night (and low sun days) - that is, when the batteries are drawn down to a certain voltage, the system turns on the generator to bring them back up full.
This should not happen very often, but as my current system is now under-sized, it runs every day. A few years ago, something went wrong with the old genset (a rat made
a nest in the generation unit), and I had it repaired then. It blew a board, and the contacts on the rotor were greased up with rat fat, which caused arcing. This probably led
to the current failure. The new genset is critter-proofed by fine (1/8") screening from the factory. The old one was protected by 1/4" screening (obviously not fine enough).

On to the Solar Upgrade:
The upgrades - 3900kw of SunPower E-20 solar panels on a Wattsun Tracker, upgrading Outback inverters to 48v from 24, adding 12 more Trojan L16RE-2v batteries (old
ones are less than 4 months old), 1000w Bergey wind turbine on a 60' supported tower.

Ideally, an off-grid home should be equipped with 150w of solar per battery. We don't come any where close to that currently. Plus our current panels are old, and not at
peak efficiency (we are getting around 700w out of 1025w, on a very good day). Things you learn as you go along.... Neither my wife nor I are minimalists either, and we
have 3 parrots that need to be kept warm. Plus, our horse waterer has a bowl and pipe heater to keep it from freezing. Add a refrigerator, well pump, pressure pump,
microwave, TV, phones, satellite dvr receiver, dvd player, etc., and you will see that our requirements far exceed what we have now. We have things on timers to reduce
load, but it doesn't reduce it enough. Hence the upgrades to the system. Plus we have added an outbuilding that must be heated (kept at 55F until it is in use), and a
sunroom (where the birds are kept) heated by a pellet stove and kept at 65F during the night. Our upgraded system will better handle the load, plus added insulation to the
sunroom floor framing this spring will help. Until then - no lights on during the day, TV use kept to a minimum, power the well pump only when the generator is on, etc., etc.,
etc. At least I am here full time now, so when something goes wrong, fails, or starts to fail, I usually catch it quickly and can try to remedy it before it causes a big hit to the
bank. However, The genset failed catastrophically, so there was no way to have caught it early - there was no sign other than the occasional blown fuse - when replaced, the
genset acted normally, and all readings were good with no alarms. Even had it looked at twice, and the techs could not find any problems. Then, no start and a VERY strong
burnt windings odor. ARRRRGGGH. Even caused a 120v feedback alarm on the B/U inverter. Fortunately, that was cleared with a complete system reset. It was a very bad
day - but STILL way better than Peyton's! I actually felt sorry for him.

[CP]

Very nice set up Caveman! Our off grid set up is tiny compared to that.
We run our entire household (very small also) and this website with only 2 - 45w stationary panel racks for 90w total @ optimum sun angle which is a very short period of each day. Those are charging two 12v deep cycle rv batteries typical of any parts store. For inverters we only run off of 2 - 400 watt and manage to keep our usage down fairly well without things like well pumps, refrigerators or hot water heaters.
All water is either moved with small pumps for transfer or 12v pumps for the ondemand hot water heater when it gets installed soon. (man that will be nice)
Otherwise we use the good ol' gravity of life to feed the water line....cold only....brrr!

For additional power in evenings, we run a 5kw pull start genny....boy that can be a fun one in single digits to get started!!

We hope to add some upgraded wattage and storage capacity as soon as we can but we manage with what we "OWN" (loved your mention about ownership....NICE ONE!)

Oh and let me know if you're unloading any of those panels.... you might be just adding to your arrary but if it's a replace project send me a pm, maybe we can work out something for the used stuff.